One Week
by Jennistar1
Summary: 'Change is that quick, and that destructive. A second is nothing. One week is nothing. Erik thinks about his one week a lot. Too much.' Erik spends one week at the mansion learning how to care - he finds his power, finds friends, finds a home and perhaps even finds love...and then he abandons it all. This is his one week.
1. Monday & Tuesday

Erik can't understand how one week could impact his life so much. Oh, he knows it _happens._ A second can change someone's life, never mind a week. The moment when the bullet shot through his mother's brain changed his life irrevocably, and it was over in the blink of an eye. But he has never been able to wrap his mind around the concept of _change_ and of how _quickly _it can happen.

One moment Charles was standing, his feet buried in sand, and the next he was spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Change is that quick, and that destructive. A second is nothing. One week is nothing.

Erik thinks about his one week a lot. Too much.

* * *

**Monday**

It was different being in the house. In the CIA area, they had all been separated a little more. The kids had their own area and he and Charles spent their time discussing political problems with Moira, trying out Cerebro, or hunting for more baby mutants. It wasn't homely at all, not with those brainless CIA agents all over the place. Really, Erik couldn't be happier that they were all dead. Still, best not to say that kind of thing out loud.

The 'tour' of the house soon dissolved into arguments about who wanted what room. The house had more bedrooms that Erik could count, and yet they still argued, and heatedly as well. Eventually Raven assumed authority over the others, announcing that this was practically _her _house and therefore she could have whatever room she wanted, whilst Sean insisted on a room with a view and Hank demanded somewhere close to the laboratory. Moira muttered something about 'bunch of men and infants' and went to explore a completely different wing to the rest of them, and Erik and Charles took advantage of the distraction to visit Charles's room. The corridor the room was located on was also filled with unused bedrooms, Charles had told him, and since Erik knew that if he lived near any of the kids he would probably strangle them within 24 hours, living on the same corridor as Charles seemed the best option.

One of the smaller rooms, tucked right at the corner of the house, appealed to Erik straightaway. He nosed around, peering out of the window (fields, more fields, and a huge satellite dish on the horizon, that was all) and looking in cupboards. Charles lounged against the doorway, rubbing bemusedly at his nose.

"You know, there's lots of better rooms around," he pointed out.

Erik, head in the wardrobe, snorted. "I prefer somewhere hidden," he said. He didn't mention the years he spent in that concentration camp hiding from Nazi guards whenever they were ordered to come for him, scrunching up small in cupboards or dark, cold corners. He didn't mention that he'd done it every single time, and that every single time it hadn't worked. He suspected he didn't need to, because Charles had suddenly gone very quiet and that meant he was likely reading Erik's mind.

"Want to see my room?" Charles asked.

They went to visit it. It was dusty from neglect but absolutely enormous. Erik could count the number of times he'd been in a room this huge on one hand. He ran an eye over the grubby bookshelves and statues covered in dustsheets and said, "You really are disgustingly rich, aren't you?"

"Disgustingly," Charles agreed cheerfully and threw back one of the huge velvet curtains. Sunlight tumbled into the room, throwing the dust into relief. They could hear the kids screaming excitedly from somewhere downstairs. Erik rolled his eyes but Charles smiled faintly and said, "It's good they've got a distraction from what happened last night."

Last night seemed suddenly hundreds of years ago to Erik. He remembered Darwin briefly. He'd liked Darwin, the kid had had a lot of street smarts which most of these brats were sorely lacking. They weren't going to last five seconds in a fight with Shaw.

"They will once we've trained them properly," Charles pointed out.

Erik threw him a filthy look. "Get out of my head."

Charles shrugged half apologetically and threw back another curtain. Another burst of sunlight lit up the room, and fell onto a particularly fine specimen of chessboard in the centre of the room. Intrigued despite himself, Erik went over to examine it. A thick layer of dust covered the heads of all the pieces. He picked up the black king and blew the muck off it. Charles glanced over at him.

"Oh, that's my old chessboard," he realised. "I haven't seen that in ages." He laughed. "I used to love playing chess, but no one would ever play with me. Raven hated it because I always used to beat her. You should see her at Monopoly though."

If Erik had been at the stage of being able to smile, he would have smiled then. But that was a few days off, so he nodded instead. "There was a board at the camp," he said, and didn't elaborate.

Charles left the curtains and went to hover by the board. "What side do you play?"

Erik met his eyes. "Black," he said.

Charles smiled. "White," he replied.

* * *

That was how Raven found them five hours later - in a room covered in dust, some curtains open, the rest closed, and the two of them hunched over the board halfway through their third game. Erik thinks now that she must have called the others and tidied the room around them, but he couldn't remember them being there, or anything they'd have spoken about while they were there. All he remembered was that Charles smiled a lot even when he was losing, that Erik managed to surprise him several times which meant he probably wasn't using telepathy to cheat, and that when he looked up it was almost midnight and the room was spotless.

"Oh," he said, and then realised he was exhausted.

Charles smiled at him. "Same time tomorrow?" he asked.

* * *

That night, Erik had the usual nightmares, the ones about being strapped to that cold examination table, Shaw's face in his and all those saws hanging above him, tickling at his new and confusing senses. He woke himself up by lurching upright, his mouth stretched in a scream that was already fading away by the time he came round. For a moment he floundered, suddenly unable to remember where he was, before he could pull himself together enough to breathe normally. He coped the same way he did whenever he woke up in a panic, which was by resting his forehead on his raised knees, counting his breathing in seconds and thinking about how he would kill Shaw in deadly detail.

He wasn't even halfway through the thought before there was an extremely tentative knock at the door.

"What?" he snapped.

Charles's head peeped around the door. "Your death fantasy is unrealistic," he pointed out. "I'm not sure it's physically possible to hang Shaw from that appendage."

Erik threw Charles his most murderous look. "I told you to stay out of my head," he said in his darkest tone.

Charles smiled as if Erik had just offered him a chance to swim with some dolphins. "Are you all right?"

Erik, overcome with indignation, reached under his pillow for his gun, but Charles had wisely ducked out of the room by the time he had his hand on it. It only occurred then that Erik could have called the gun into his hand in moments and got rid of the pest far sooner, if not permanently. He had to be more tired than he realised.

Angrily, he punched his pillow a few times and curled up into it. He was asleep in seconds.

* * *

**Tuesday**

There was a knock on his door. He buried his face into his pillow and shouted "_No_," but the door was already being opened.

"I made pancakes for breakfast," Raven's voice announced brightly. "Come to the kitchen."

"Does no one understand the concept of privacy in this house?" Erik snarled into his pillow.

"_Pancakes_," Raven snapped, and closed the door again.

Erik considered not going anywhere, perhaps even hiding in the cupboard to remind himself of the old days, but he could smell maple syrup drifting through the open door and it made him realise he was actually very hungry. He surrendered to the temptation and got out of bed.

By the time he found his way to the kitchen (and just _how _big was this house anyway, it was getting ridiculous), everyone was already there arguing over the lemon and sugar. The sun was shining through big open windows, Moira was yelling at someone over the phone through a mouthful of pancake, Raven was feeding an overjoyed Hank spoon after spoon of Nutella, and Alex was downing maple syrup straight out of the bottle to the encouraging cheers of Sean. It was absolute chaos.

Charles was half sprinkling sugar on his pancake and half reading a book in his hand, but when Erik came in, he put down the book and smiled brighter than the sun. "Want some pancakes?" he asked. "The hoard ravaged most of them, but I saved a plate for you." And he held out the plate in question, loaded high with pancakes.

Erik had no idea what to say to this, so he sat down instead, pulled at the metal of the sugar dispenser until it flew into his hand and snatched a lemon out of Sean's grip, cutting off the kid's rebuke with a mere glance. He applied himself to his pancakes, listening to the squabble around them.

Moira hung up her phone and sat down next to him. "The CIA are a bunch of morons," she sighed. "They won't give us any more agents after what happened with the last ones."

"We don't need them," Charles pointed out. "No one knows where we are."

"They were useless anyway," Erik said to his pancakes. "Better off dead, to be honest. I'd have done it myself before long anyway."

There was a brief silence. Erik belatedly reminded himself that this was one of those things that was better left unsaid.

And then Moira said, "Oh my god, you are _adorable_."

Charles choked on his pancake. Erik threw her his most venomous look. She smiled sweetly in answer.

"I could torture you in ways you couldn't possibly imagine," Erik growled at her, and added for good measure, "Or survive."

To his complete astonishment, Moira actually flailed a bit. "I'm going to knit you a hat," she informed him, "With a bobble on it."

Charles sounded like he was choking to death. And then Raven started laughing, which set Hank off, which, because he sounded like a hamster being stood on, set everyone else off as well. Erik sat amidst the pandemonium in dumbfounded silence.

This was a _madhouse_.

* * *

"Training applies to us as well," Charles said to Erik as they made their way to the gardens at the front of the house after breakfast. "What do you want to try?"

"I want you to shoot me in the head," Erik said, completely poker-faced. It was worth it to see Charles's shocked reaction.

* * *

The whole 'shooting a bullet into Erik's head' thing didn't work so well after Charles seemed to have developed an allergic reaction to firing a gun. They ended up facing the satellite dish instead. "Try moving that," Charles said.

Erik stared at him. "I can't."

"Try," insisted Charles.

Erik tried. Then tried again. Then tried harder. He failed each time.

* * *

That evening was a quiet one. No one was doing very well with their training. Alex had torched an underground bunker and Sean had broken a lot of antique windows and not done much more. Then there was Raven, who was doing nothing and Hank, who was doing too much at once. Erik had stayed silent throughout the whole dinner, his whole attention fixed on the satellite dish outside, which was covered by darkness but still there and bright to his metal senses.

Later on he played half a game of chess with Charles before making so many bad moves that Charles sent him to bed in disgust. Again, he was asleep in seconds.

* * *

This nightmare was worse. It was his mother's face, her expression as she said "everything is good". That was all. Just her face and that constantly repeated line. When Erik woke, his face was wet with tears.

He lay in rattled silence for a moment, then, for something to do, cast his mind out to the satellite dish beyond the house. It was so huge, so impossibly huge. He'd never be able to even move it an inch. Who the hell did he think he was to even try?

This time there was no knock at the door, it just opened and Erik sensed rather than saw Charles in the doorway.

"Are you all right?" Charles murmured.

Erik sighed. "Are you going to ask me this every time I have a nightmare?"

"If you keep waking me up with it, then yes," Charles countered.

There was an awkward silence. "Sorry," Erik said grumpily. "And I'm fine."

"It's fine," Charles echoed softly.

There was another awkward silence.

"Are you going to leave me alone now?" Erik snapped.

"No," Charles replied. "Want some whiskey?"

Which was how they ended up in the kitchen at 3am, drinking through Charles's stepfather's old whiskey supplies.

* * *

"So," Charles said, dragging out bottle after bottle of whiskey from the closest cupboard. "If you didn't have the powers you have, what powers would you want?"

Erik stared at him, halfway through getting some glasses from the sideboard. "I don't know," he said. "I've never thought about it." Why would he? Controlling metal was the power he had, and it was a good power as far as powers went. At least he didn't have an 'uncontrollable destructive red ray' problem.

Charles hummed as if he wasn't surprised, then opened the first whiskey and proceeded to neck it without even touching the glass Erik had put in front of him. Erik waited patiently for him to finish, then took the bottle and filled his glass. He'd never been a fan of drinking out of bottles, it seemed…inelegant. Though somehow Charles was making the action look more sexy than it had any right to be.

He pushed the thought away and considered the question. He'd quite like to be invisible, it would make it easier for him to get into places unseen and assassinate certain people but then he'd never needed invisibility powers to become unseen. He would quite like…

"Flying," he said out loud. "It would be nice to fly. The freedom." He remembered days in the camp when he'd been working outside and the sky had been clear and blue. On those days he'd stared up and thought about flying into that cold emptiness far away from where he was. It had been a brief but pleasant distraction, to imagine that.

"Flying?" Charles echoed. He appeared to muse on this. "Yes, it would be nice."

And then Erik had a brainwave. "Wait," he murmured. "_Flying._"

"Hm?" Charles took another swig out of the whiskey bottle.

Erik stared at him. "Banshee," he said. "_Flying._"

Charles blinked, then put down the bottle, his eyes lighting up. "The sonic waves – "

" – Could mean he could fly," Erik said. "If he angled it right – "

" – And if he had some kind of wings," Charles continued excitedly. "Hank could draw something up, I'm sure of it! Then all he needs to do is jump off somewhere high and he can - "

" – glide!" Erik finished for them.

Charles beamed at him. "My God, Erik - what Sean needs is a dose of confidence - if he can fly, he could do so much, it'll give him just what he needs - you're a genius!"

Charles's compliment made Erik's stomach squirm in a not entirely unpleasant way. He blamed the whiskey, glared at the glass, then took another hefty sip of it.

"I'll talk to Hank tomorrow," Charles said, mostly to himself. "Tell him about your brilliant idea."

"_Our_ brilliant idea," Erik corrected.

Charles paused, then glanced up at Erik and smiled so brightly that Erik was half-convinced he'd be blinded. Suddenly his stomach stopped squirming and dropped away from him all together, as if he'd shot up several floors too quickly.

Even now he couldn't find it in him to smile back.

There was a thoughtful pause while Charles clearly went through some of the logistics of the idea in his head and Erik topped up his glass. Then Erik said, "So what about you?"

"Huh?" said Charles, still a little far away.

Erik persisted. "If you weren't a telepath, what powers would you like?"

"Huh," Charles said again, more thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. I've always liked what Raven can do."

Erik half shrugged. "Not so different from what you do now though, is it? It's just getting into someone's body rather than into their mind."

Charles hesitated. "It's a bit more than just 'getting into someone's mind'. I mean, it's – it's more subtle than that. There are different levels."

Ah, there was a little shred of that arrogance coming through. Charles didn't often show it, but it was certainly there in the background. Erik rested his chin on his hand. "Such as?"

"Well," Charles said, and took another gulp of whiskey. "There's different depths I can go to. I just do a simple sweep on most people, to be honest. People have more thoughts bubbling on the surface than they realise. If I want to see through someone's eyes, I have to go a bit deeper. And if I want to control a thought, that's the deepest of all."

"How deep did you go with me?" Erik asked. "When you were asking me to let go of the submarine."

Charles met his eyes levelly. "Pretty deep," he said.

There was another silence, half thoughtful and half awkward. Erik tapped his almost empty glass on the countertop. "Why are you doing this, Charles?"

Charles frowned. "Doing what?"

"_Rescuing_ people," Erik snapped. "First Raven, now the rest of us. You've got a complex about it. Why are you even bothering? Everyone will owe you and no one will thank you for it."

Charles stalled. "I'm not – " he said, "I'm not doing this because I want to be _owed_, Erik. You owe me nothing. I do it for…" He paused, as if he honestly didn't know his motive for being so selfless. "Well," he said at last. "I guess I just do it to make people's lives better."

Erik flashed him a disbelieving look. Charles sighed and leaned forward, eyes suddenly intent. "See, the thing is," he elaborated, "You'd think being a telepath would make you dislike people. Because you see the real them. There's only honesty, all the deceptions are gone. You see their cowardly moments, their ugly moments. But…well, for some reason that's what makes people _likeable_. Once you strip away all the deceptions, you see why they were there in the first place, and it's always because of insecurity, or panic, or fear, or…or traumatic experiences. Something understandable. And if you give people a chance, you see them overcoming these obstacles, and it's beautiful, Erik, it really is." He paused to take another drink. "I just wish everyone had that insight - I wish we were all telepaths. Humans, Erik, are fundamentally _good_."

"Humans." Erik took a sip of his whiskey. "What about mutants?"

Charles blinked but smiled. "Those too. Especially the ones who are good at chess."

And that - for some unexplained reason – was the thing that made Erik smile. A proper smile, not a crazed 'hold a gun to my head and shoot me with it' smile. A genuinely nice smile.

He could see Charles bask in it.

* * *

**A/N: **

**This fic is a little out of canon, just so I could take liberties with some things, e.g. when Charles and Erik discover their shared love for chess etc. Also because I have only been a Cherik fan for about a week!  
**

**This fic will be in 3 parts and I will update in a few days. Reviews and favs are loved and appreciated more than I can say.**


	2. Wednesday & Thursday

**Wednesday**

Erik woke up suddenly. His face was pressed into the countertop and his head felt like a herd of elephants had trodden over it. It was daylight outside and he could hear the ominous sounds of people stirring out of their beds.

He raised his head. The evidence of last night was scattered around him in the form of far too many empty bottles, and Charles was slumped opposite him, his cheek against the kitchen surface and his hand still wrapped around a half empty whiskey bottle. He was somehow managing to drool and snore at the same time.

Erik recalled, briefly, one of them singing the American national anthem. He rubbed his head in the hope that it might alleviate his headache a bit, then struggled off the barstool and to the sink to pour himself a glass of water. He turned around, gulping the water, to survey the damage. There was an upturned cutlery drawer on the side and all the cutlery was scattered everywhere. He vaguely remembered attempting to make the forks dance with the knives.

Charles snorted loudly, then mumbled something and turned his head on the work surface, leaving a trail of drool behind him. Erik smirked. "You look lovely, darling," he said, which was when Raven came charging into the kitchen. She took one look at the chaos, grinned with malevolent glee and then shouted, "_Good morning!_"

Charles opened his eyes with a barely disguised shriek. Erik briefly imagined as many different ways of killing Raven as he could.

Charles groaned, pressing two fingers to his head. "Erik, stop it," he said. "And Raven…I hate you."

Raven's grin only got wider. "I thought I could hear shouting last night," she said. "And did someone sing the national anthem?"

Erik rolled his eyes with as much dignity as he had left to him. "I'm going out for some fresh air," he snapped.

"Oh," Charles gasped, "Sean and his flying! Hank!" And he leapt off the barstool and ran out of the room, for all the world as if he hadn't drunk several bottles of whiskey only a few hours ago.

Erik turned on Raven. "Does he _get_ hangovers?"

"Nah," Raven said, shrugging. "Something about the excellent control he has on his mind."

Erik clenched his jaw. "I'm going to kill him."

* * *

Erik stood outside for a while and stared at the satellite dish. It refused to move, but his headache got worse. After a few more failed attempts, he gave up the exercise in favour of slumping against the stone balcony and wishing he was dead.

"Hey," said a voice nervously. Erik glanced over. Alex was approaching him, looking about as wrecked as Erik felt. "Hi," he said. "Um. I need to ask you something."

Erik scowled. "I'm not in the mood to be asked things."

His foul attitude was treated the way it was treated by everyone in the house – ignored completely. Alex said, "Yeah, that's lovely and all, but I need to know if you have some."

Erik frowned. "What?"

"If you have some," Alex said. "Because I really need some, I've tried not to want it but I can't hack it anymore, I have to have some. And you seem like the sort of guy who would have a stash."

Erik stared at the boy in complete and utter astonishment. "You think I'm a _crackhead?_"

"_What?_" Alex spluttered. "No! I was talking about cigarettes!"

"Oh!" Erik said. And then, "Right."

"Did you think I was on drugs just because I've been in prison?" Alex accused.

"What?" Erik snapped. "No, of course not."

They glared at each other. It occurred to Erik that he and the boy had an alarming amount in common. Too much life experience and not enough trust in other people.

"C'mon," he said. "I've got a few packs in my room."

* * *

Half an hour later found them sitting on the steps of one of the more hidden back doors, working their way sneakily through a pack of cigarettes. Alex was complaining about his training. He was surprisingly open about his feelings considering the kind of lifestyle he'd been leading when they'd met him.

"It's all about control, the Prof says," he muttered, lighting another cigarette with the end of his last one. "Well that's all great if you know how to _gain _control, but I just…I just stand there and it happens." He glanced sidelong at Erik. "How do you get control?"

Erik thought about submarines and satellites, and his complete inability to control either. Instead he said, "My way of controlling my power won't work for you."

"Oh yeah?" Alex retorted. "Why not?"

"Because mine is based in rage," Erik said flatly. "Real rage. Years and years of it. And you don't have that."

Alex bristled. "I might do. I was in prison, you know. A lot. And alone. My family did nothing about it, they wouldn't even visit me."

"My family is dead," Erik countered. "I loved them. I could have done something to stop their deaths and I didn't. You want to know what real pain is, experience that."

Alex fell into silence. Erik got the impression he had once more gone a bit too far. He studied the end of his burning cigarette.

"It still wouldn't work, even if you had that rage," he said. "You aren't naturally predisposed to violence. You're peaceful. You want to help people, not destroy them. So being angry wouldn't help you control your power."

Alex stared at him. "Then what would?!"

Erik flicked his cigarette away. "Probably some sort of emergency." He picked another cigarette out of the pack. "One where you have to control your power or face killing people."

Alex sighed. "Great," he said. "So basically I'm not going to know if I can control myself until I'm in the bloody battle itself."

Erik glanced sidelong at Alex. He was fundamentally a good guy, Alex. It was most unfortunate. Because that meant even though they had so much in common, all that life experience, all that knowledge of what humanity was really like at its dirtiest and darkest, Alex would never see Erik's side of things. He wasn't flawed from the start like Erik. He still had happy memories, people he loved. That sort of thing pulled you away from the kind of horror Erik existed in. It stopped you wanting to destroy people and meant you wanted to help them instead.

Alex, Erik thought suddenly, was who Erik might have been if he'd met Charles a bit earlier in life.

There was a flicker of consciousness at the edges of his mind and suddenly Charles's voice said, _Erik, are you smoking?_

Shit. All that musing about Charles must have accidentally drawn Charles's mind to his. Erik tried his best not to think about Alex.

_Wait, is Alex smoking?!_ Charles snapped. _Erik, did you just give my underage student cigarettes?!_

Double shit. Erik flicked his cigarette away. "Time to run," he said. "Charles is on to us."

"Crap!" Alex leapt to his feet. "Which way?"

"Uh." Erik stood up too, trying to work out where Charles had been when he'd spoken to him. "I think he was outside, coming around to back of the house."

Alex took off, Erik right behind him, but they'd barely got to the edge of the house before a flash wearing a grey tracksuit and glasses shot out of nowhere and tripped them both up. They fell face down on the gravel with a groan. When Erik glanced up, Charles was standing in front of both of them, tapping his foot, his arms crossed menacingly. Hank was standing next to him, barefoot and grinning.

"Sodding Bigfoot," Alex groaned.

* * *

Charles yelled at them both, a lecture peppered with mental images of their lungs blackening and decaying, then confiscated Erik's cigarettes ("I'll be able to tell if you try and keep any aside, Erik, I'm a _telepath_") and sent them to the windows to go and watch Sean's first attempt at flight from a first storey window.

Sean fell straight down into the bushes. Erik laughed so hard he thought his ribs would crack.

It turned out that Erik laughing was more terrifying to the others than any of his threats had been, and most of them shot each other alarmed looks before fleeing the scene. Charles merely sighed and went downstairs to help Sean out of the bush whilst Erik leaned on the windowsill and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

* * *

They set up the chessboard in the evening and played several sleepy games of chess. Erik was more chatty than he'd been all week, and more mischievous than he'd been in a long time. It was more than a little disconcerting for him. He combated it by drinking more whiskey (hair of the dog and all) and irritating Charles with his chess moves.

"You can't do that, it's an illegal manoeuvre," Charles said at last, after Erik's latest move.

Erik raised an eyebrow. "Yes I can."

"No you _can__'__t_," Charles insisted, his obsession with being right coming to the fore. "The queen can't go there if - "

"I can," Erik interrupted, "Because I'm me."

Charles glared up at him. He was wearing the expression of a petulant five year old. "Being Erik doesn't mean you can just break the rules!"

"Yes it does," Erik retorted, and was rewarded with a further child-like scowl. He tried not to grin.

Charles sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "Okay then, what rules can I break?"

"None of them."

"That's not fair!"

"Life's not fair."

They watched each other, poker-faced.

"Fine," Charles said at last, and then, without looking down, moved one of his pieces. "Checkmate," he announced.

Erik stared down at the board. Charles's knight had toppled his king. He couldn't stop his jaw dropping.

Charles sat back smugly. "See? Breaking the rules doesn't always mean you'll win."

Erik tore his eyes away from the board and glared at him. "Is this another lecture about the cigarettes?"

At that, Charles actually threw back his head and laughed. It was so rare to have Erik make Charles laugh that he found himself almost breathless at the sight of it.

"No." Charles said, a broad smile on his face which, suddenly and for reasons Erik couldn't understand, seemed to fade away as Charles looked at him. He turned to take another sip of his own drink - brandy this time - and by the time he'd turned back to Erik, he was smiling again. "You're enjoying it here, aren't you?" he said.

Erik blinked. "No."

"You laughed today," Charles pointed out. "You never laugh but you laughed today."

"Yes, at someone falling out of a window, Charles," Erik found himself snapping. He hated people telling him what he was feeling. "Hardly a nice reason to laugh."

Charles's smile gentled. "Baby steps, Erik. Rome wasn't built in a day."

Erik rolled his eyes. "Spare me," he said, which made Charles laugh all over again.

* * *

Erik lay awake for a long time after the chess games, turning over the problems of Alex and Sean in his mind. He needed them to be the best they could be by the time Shaw's next move became obvious to them, and he knew it wouldn't be long before that happened. If he was going to be stuck in a team, he was going to make sure they were good enough not to ruin everything for him. And that meant solutions for both those kids needed to be found. For Erik's own good.

And then he thought about Sean's eagerness at being able to fly. He thought about Alex's desperation to gain some control of himself. He saw their faces clearly in his mind.

Perhaps, he thought with some wonder, his motives for helping them were not as selfish as he'd first thought.

* * *

That night, Erik dreamed of one of Shaw's 'experiments'. One he'd often done in their early days. He'd drag two prisoners out of the camp, stand them in front of Erik and fire two bullets, one for each head. If Erik could stop the bullets, they'd live.

At the beginning, Erik very, very rarely stopped the bullets. One day, Shaw had repeated a failed experiment again, with two more prisoners. And then again, and then again, and then again, all day long until there was a pile of bleeding corpses in front of them.

He'd theorised that fear was what could unlock Erik's power as well as anger, fear of people dying like his mother had. Once Shaw had set an example with Erik's mother, he was sure Erik would learn from it and be doubly terrified of others dying. Because Shaw had thought Erik was that human. But something had happened to Erik, some thread of empathy inside him cut clean once his mother was gone. It was only when he turned the experiment around in his head, swapping his fear at the prisoners' deaths for anger at Shaw's existence, that he'd been able to stop the bullets at all. But that had taken many months and many lives.

Erik woke up, hours later, in a curled, shaking ball of nerves. There were gunshots in his head, and he had been screaming and crying, but not out loud. It was young Erik, still lingering in his memories. Young Erik had been wild with helplessness for years and years. At least Erik wasn't that anymore. He wasn't helpless. He wouldn't be, ever again. He had decided that a long time ago.

He was shaking properly now, instead of calming down, and with barely suppressed rage. He wanted to find Shaw, he wanted to _find_ him and give him that ultimate of deaths, the death he'd always dreamed of, he wanted that man's _blood on his hands _–

Charles said suddenly in his head, _Erik, shh._ A wave of calm flooded his mind, leaking into every hate-filled thought. _Calm your mind,_ Charles said.

Charles had said that before, the first time they met, when they were up to their ears in freezing cold water and Shaw was in his submarine getting further and further away. Erik had been able to sense it, that huge hulk of uncontrollable metal carrying his chance right out of his increasingly panicky grip, and he wanted to _kill him _–

_I said,_ Charles interrupted more sternly in his head, _calm your mind._ Another wave of calm swept into Erik's head, followed by one of reassurance, and Erik felt his muscles loosen, his thoughts unravel. He was dimly aware of Charles's mind curling around his, for all the world as if his body was curling around the back of Erik's. Erik could feel the warmth seeping round his back to his front, vivid enough to make him shiver. It was like a drug, this peace in his head, like morphine.

"You can't just do this to people's minds, Charles," he said out loud, though his voice sounded thick and heavy in his ears. "I want to stay angry."

_Save it for training,_ said Charles's voice, _and rest._

"You can't do this to my mind," Erik argued, but he could feel all his coherent thoughts skittering away from him, like insects into dark holes. He melted into the grip of Charles's mind as if he were melting into arms around his chest.

_Shh,_ said Charles simply, and Erik faded back into unconsciousness.

* * *

Thursday

The first thing Erik saw the next morning was the satellite dish outside his window. He sat up abruptly. Dawn was barely on the horizon and the room was grey with what little light there was, but Erik was wide awake. He swung his legs out of bed and made his way to Charles's room.

Charles's room wasn't locked, which Erik wasn't quite sure how to take - it indicated such a high level of trust that he felt quite confused. Charles had been in his head, had seen the things Erik had done, all the people he had killed in his life, and yet still kept his door unlocked. It was unthinkably stupid.

When he ventured inside the room all the curtains were closed and there was a hunched up figure in the ridiculously huge bed, snoring lightly.

"I've had a great idea," he announced.

The figure twitched, then groaned. "Erik, it's still the middle of the night."

Erik strode over and sat down rather boisterously on the bed. He heard a sigh of resignation, and then Charles peeled back the duvet covering his face. He was looking distinctly dishevelled, his face very pale and eyes very blue in the pre-dawn light, and Erik's stomach dropped dangerously at the sight of it.

"If it's about Sean, I've already had that idea," Charles said tiredly.

"We need him to jump off somewhere higher," Erik persisted, ignoring him. "Somewhere like – "

" – the top of the satellite dish, yeah, I know," Charles finished. "And if he can't do it, you'll be able to guide him with his belts and buckles and the metal of the satellite dish. So he won't fall at all." He grinned at Erik's put-out expression. "I'd already thought of it, sorry. Can I go back to sleep now?"

Erik hesitated. "I've had another idea about something," he said. "But I'm not sure if you'll like it."

An extremely _un_-Charles-like expression flickered across Charles's face. It was only momentary but it was there, and Erik recognised it as _fear._ Charles never showed fear, even if he felt it. He had the courage to grasp hold of it and use it to his advantage. It was something Erik liked about him.

"Oh," Charles said. "Right. Um. What idea is that?"

Erik shifted closer on the bed without really thinking about it. "It's something that would take a lot of trust if it's going to work out. Because it could be very dangerous, and - well pretty inadvisable to be honest."

"Uh," mumbled Charles. "Uh huh."

Erik sighed and swung his legs up on the bed, settling down on the pillows and looking up at the ceiling in an attempt to find the right words. He was distantly aware that Charles, lying next to him, had gone very still. "I think Alex needs to practice on humans," he said.

There was a brief pause from Charles's side of the bed and then he said, "Alex? You want…you were talking about _Alex?_"

Erik blinked. "Well, yes. I was thinking about how he could gain control of his powers." He glanced over at Charles. "What did you think I was talking about?"

"Nothing," Charles replied instantly. "Nothing at all." He looked, for want of a better word, _relieved._ All that fear had gone. "So," he said. "Alex. Um. Sorry – practice on _humans?!_"

Erik sighed. "I knew you wouldn't like it."

"That's unbelievably dangerous!" Charles spluttered. "He's been bad enough about shooting dummies, now you want him to try on people?"

Erik turned his face to Charles. "It's fear," he said.

There was a long pause, and then Charles propped himself up on one elbow, the duvet dropping to his waist. He wore a rather shabby grey t-shirt to bed which shouldn't have been attractive at all. "This is about your dream."

Erik decided not to ask how much of the dream Charles had seen last night. Instead, he replied, "Alex panics about hurting people. Okay? That's why he can't control his power, because he's anxious that he will hurt someone, and that makes him lose control even more. But if we put him in a situation where he is forced to control himself or risk lives, that is how he'll _learn_ that control. Through fear of the consequences."

Charles was searching Erik's eyes and, most likely, his mind as well. "The experiment that Shaw tried on you and that didn't work," he said. "Fear of killing people leads to control of the weapon you're using. But that line of thought didn't work on you and that's part of the reason why you think you're monst – "

"Look, do you think it's a good idea or not?" Erik snapped, jolting up off the bed. "It doesn't have to be as _extreme_ as – as – "

"No, no, I think it's good," Charles interrupted hastily, also sitting up. "No, I think it's good Erik – I think it's good."

Erik paused, halfway across the room and practically ready to flee the place completely. "Right," he said. "Good."

Charles, sat up in the bed, watched Erik with an unreadable expression. "I think I should tweak the idea just a bit though. Make it more about not wanting to hurt people he cares for, people who trust him, rather than making him afraid of killing. Alex has got a good sense of team loyalty, once you get past the bravado."

Erik half shrugged, feeling himself close off from everything he'd been opening up to. "Whatever you like."

"Okay," Charles said, still with that odd expression on his face. "Good."

"Good," echoed Erik, and fled, Charles's eyes following him as he went.

* * *

Erik wandered the house aimlessly for a bit, then found Raven lifting weights in the gym in her silly blonde disguise. Feeling irritable for a host of reasons and also not really any of them, he sniped at her about her disguising herself. It had been infuriating him for a while, much like the general idea of hiding away had been.

He'd spent his childhood hiding from Shaw in cupboards and closets and dark places. He never wanted to hide again, from anyone. One day he wouldn't. He would be everything he wanted to be, and no amount of psychological warfare that a certain 'professor' waged on him was going to change that.

Charles was in disguise too, as an innocent, seemingly harmless idiot. He was not any of these things, and it would damage Erik's chance at revenge not to remember that. Erik was here to use these people and get his vengeance at last, that was all. He was not here to help others in distress or allow himself to be mentally influenced by interfering telepaths. He had to remember that.

Restless, he went out into the gardens and tried to turn the satellite dish for a while. He had enough rage bubbling inside him to move planets, he was sure, but the dish stayed firmly in place. He was doing something wrong. Somehow the darkness, which had always been enough previously, wasn't enough for this one task. He had to be better than this. He was sure he was. Always so sure in his abilities even if he was sure of nothing else…until now.

A bit later, when it appeared to have suddenly turned into the afternoon and Erik was leaning exhausted on the stone parapet, Alex appeared behind him. He was flushed and excited from a clearly successful session in the basement.

"I'm not giving you any more cigarettes," he growled.

"What?" said Alex, high on victory that Erik, with his non-moving satellite dish, could not share. "No, man, I wasn't coming for that. I wanted to say thanks."

"Thanks." The word tasted flat in Erik's mouth.

"Yeah," Alex said. "The Prof said you were behind today's task. So I wanted to say thanks."

Erik blinked. He had never been thanked for anything in his entire life. "I wasn't…it wasn't just me. I had the idea we should add people into the mix. I wanted to bring out your fear. Charles was the one who suggested appealing to your compassion instead."

"Oh what, with the whole 'I trust you' thing?" Alex laughed. "Yeah, that was a nicer approach, I guess. We can count on the Prof to be nice though, huh."

Erik turned back to the satellite dish.

"You know, you're not a total dick," Alex added after a pause. "I know people are scared of you and stuff – "

Erik let out a bitter laugh before he could stop himself. "_What _people? Certainly not you lot. Moira keeps threatening to knit me a hat!"

Alex grinned. "Yeah, but," he persevered. "You're not as bad as you think, you know." He shuffled around in the gravel for a bit and then said, "Just thought you should know."

Erik didn't know what to say. He wanted to ask, _did Charles put you up to this?_ but he didn't want to seem paranoid. And Alex was nice. He liked the kid.

The problem was that he was starting to suspect nice people were not _his _people.

* * *

After dinner, Raven caught all of them with glee and corralled them into the living room. "No chess tonight," she said firmly. "For now is the time of Monopoly."

"Oh no," Charles said and tried to back out of the room, but it was too late – Raven had him in a firm grip. Erik swapped a glance with him but there was no point trying to resist. They ended up crowding the living room together, Raven and Hank perched on one sofa (Hank blushing in an excited tizzy), Sean curled up in an armchair with his arms around his knees, Moira and Charles lounging on the other sofa. Erik sat on the floor near Charles and was unsurprised when Alex immediately copied him opposite. It said something that the two most wary people in the room were the ones who were less inclined to laze about on armchairs and sofas and instead stay close to the ground and out of the line of sight. He flashed a quick glance at Alex and got an almost unbearably wide smile in return. They didn't have to be telepaths to know what the other was thinking.

Raven set up the Monopoly board with a single-minded focus, and Erik recalled what Charles had said about Raven being unnervingly good at the game. This, he thought, could be interesting.

"Right," Raven said. "Everyone choose a playing piece. Erik?"

Erik blinked at the little metal playing pieces in front of him. He'd played Monopoly a few times in his childhood, when some of the Nazis had 'liberated' a board from a charity gift to some prisoners of war in the camp he was in, but he only remembered the basics.

"Battleship," Charles piped up. "Erik'd be the battleship. Obviously." And then, before Erik could glance up at him, he felt Charles's hand land casually on the back of his neck. It was just a light spread of fingers, nothing more, but Erik felt his skin immediately tighten at the touch. He tried to ignore it, but the irritability that had been present in him all day was already sharpening into something worse. He took a breath to calm himself, then silently tugged at the metal of the little battleship playing piece, calling it to his hand. It sat cold and bright in his palm.

The others picked their pieces. Charles was the top hat because "it's the most British piece there is" and his hand did not leave Erik's neck once. Erik got the unshakeable feeling that Charles was skating over his thoughts, using the contact between them to have more control over him, and once he'd got the idea in his head, it wouldn't go away. It was doubtful whether Charles was reading any of his mind at all, but he couldn't understand why else Charles would be touching him like that.

The game started moderately calmly and got more raucous as it went on. Charles and Hank made sensible, boring decisions occasionally tinged with genius moves, Moira played excellently until she got bored halfway through and let it slide in favour of flicking through some paperwork on the desk nearby, Sean only seemed intent on getting the squares of places in London he'd been to, Alex kept gambling away his money on risks that didn't pay off, and Raven trounced them all with no small amount of glee. Erik, who had been trying to play well whilst remembering the rules at the same time, was singularly impressed.

"You have the killer instinct," he said, when Raven, instead of demanding his payment for landing on one of her squares with a hotel on it, insisted that he pay her in properties he owned so that she could have more control of the board. "It's commendable. Most people don't have that. See, you could have the most destructive power imaginable, but if you don't have that killer instinct, it means nothing. It's not all about the _power_, it's the _personality _as well." He paused to roll the dice and moved two spaces along, thankfully into one of his own squares. "Of course, Shaw has a destructive power combined with a brutal will, so he'll probably beat us despite our best intentions. Well," he considered this briefly, "I'll survive. Probably Raven will too, if she uses her abilities to their fullest extent. Charles might if he decides to grow a spine, but I doubt he will. The rest of you are more than likely to die on our mission."

There was a long silence. Erik glanced up and realised, firstly, that he'd been speaking his mind out loud and secondly, that what he'd been saying was even more inappropriate than talking about killing useless CIA agents. Only Raven was looking at him, and with a glowing admiration. The rest were staring at the floor or the Monopoly board.

Charles's hand fell from the back of Erik's neck, and suddenly Erik didn't have the courage to look up and see his expression. "Erik's talking about going on the offensive," Charles said at last, breaking the silence in a deadly calm voice. "That's not what we're doing. We're going on the _de_fensive_._ Our motive isn't about the 'killer instinct' but about saving lives. And I know all of us have the strongest motivation to do that, otherwise you wouldn't be here today and you wouldn't be training as hard as you are." He didn't say _so ignore everything Erik just said_ but it was keenly felt. A couple of the kids started to look a bit more hopeful.

Erik, silently, passed the dice to Moira who was next, and she rolled them. "Damn, Hank, I landed on your square," she said, too bright and cheerful in the silence, and they all lapsed into a relieved squabble about how much she owed him.

After a few rounds, just as the atmosphere in the room had warmed again, Charles stood up. "I think I'm done for tonight," he said. His voice was still perfectly steady. "Raven, you can have my squares – you've got most of them off me anyway."

Raven glanced up at him, concerned. "If you're sure…"

"Sure." Charles smiled, but Erik was sure he wasn't the only one to see how it didn't reach his eyes. "Night, all."

There was a rather disconsolate chorus of 'night' and Charles left the room. He hadn't looked at Erik once.

"Wow, Erik," Raven said, once the door had closed firmly behind him. "I think you've really pissed him off."

Erik half shrugged and pretended to be more interested in wrangling Mayfair back off Sean, but in truth his insides were squirming.

It appeared he had a real dislike for disappointing Charles.

* * *

The game ended not long after that, once Raven had, for want of a better word, _monopolised_ the Monopoly board, and she and Erik wandered back to her room together.

Erik was angry with himself - by telling the others how likely they were to die, he was jeopardising his own mission to get to Shaw. If they felt like they might die in the attempt they might drop out and then how would he defeat the man? He needed them. He needed to be more cunning than he was, and yet for some reason he was being impossibly stupid. Why was he _warning _them?

Raven, in comparison, was more cheery than he had ever seen her, brimming with potential.

"Do you really think I've got the killer instinct?" she asked. The fact that she was asking this with such excitement, Erik thought, answered her question for her.

"Doesn't really matter what I think," he said, more offhandedly than he meant. "That sort of confidence can only come from you."

Raven considered this, then smiled, a broad stretch of lips. "I'll start properly training tomorrow," she promised. She was so earnest that Erik couldn't help but smile in return.

"Good," he replied simply.

Raven paused. She appeared to be waiting for something, though Erik couldn't work out what. "Well," he said, "Good night."

He turned on his heel and marched back in the direction of his own room. Raven's voice said distantly behind him, "Good night, Erik."

* * *

That night was one of the worst nightmares, because it was one involving pain. He was strapped to one of the examination tables, the metal cold against his back, and he was focusing on holding an axe just above his throat with his powers. Shaw was plunging needles into his legs one after the other and sometimes in wounds made previously, and Erik was screaming but furiously focusing on that axe, trying his hardest not to let it drop never mind what agony he was, because if it dropped it was all over, he would die, but pain was just pain and he would concentrate through the pain, he _would –_

_Erik!_ shouted his mother in his head and he woke up screaming, a loud, long scream that only stopped when he regained enough power over himself to clap his hand over his mouth.

He lay in the dark and listened to the sounds of his scream echo into silence. He was lying straight on his side on the very edge of his bed and shivering from head to toe. He could still feel the axe hovering over his neck, he could _feel _it –

The bedroom door opened, but Erik didn't turn around - he was still shaking so hard he barely had control of his senses. He waited for Charles's inevitable intrusion into his mind, but it didn't come. Instead the bed dipped slightly and Erik was suddenly aware of a very familiar body lying very close to his, the warmth noticeable on his back and yet not touching, and with no one speaking.

Erik took in a quick breath, and another, trying to find the voice to say something, _anything_, but then an extremely tentative hand reached around and settled on the side of Erik's waist.

Erik managed to stop breathing altogether. Then, slowly, he recovered himself and continued to breath in and then out, feeling the hand on his waist rise and fall with every inhale and exhale. There was a warm tingling all along his side.

After a while it was clear the hand wasn't going to move without his permission, so he took the initiative and grasped hold of it, dragging the arm over his waist. He felt Charles shift towards him so that the front of his body was lined up with Erik's back, his arm securely tucked around Erik. Erik could feel the warmth of him all over now.

Charles let out a little sigh but said nothing, and yet this was somehow enough to unlock Erik's voice.

"Sorry," he whispered, though he was not sure whether he was apologising for waking Charles up again or for what he'd said earlier in the evening. Actually, now he thought of it, he had a lot to apologise for. "Sorry," he said again, for good measure.

He expected Charles to say something, either in his head or in his ear, but Charles said nothing at all. His hand squeezed Erik's though, very tightly.

Erik squeezed back, suddenly aware that his breathing had returned itself to normal.

Not long after that, he fell asleep.

* * *

**A/N: Fun fact, the Brits actually used to send Monopoly boards to prisoners of war in Nazi camps as 'charity gifts', and these Monopoly boards would have gear in them to help the prisoners escape, like a compass and real money tucked in the fake Monopoly money, things like that. I've always loved the idea so I had to put it in the fic somewhere!**

**Thank you so, so much for all the reviews and favs, and please continue to do this if you are enjoying the story!**

**Also this will now be a 4 part story, not a 3 part like I said before. Next chapter in a few days! (already written, just need to edit)**


	3. Friday & Saturday

**Friday**

When Erik woke up the next morning, it was far past dawn and Charles was snoring into the crook of Erik's neck, his arm still warm and heavy around Erik's waist. Erik hadn't woken up with someone else in his bed since that unfortunate morning in Casablanca, so he'd completely forgotten the lazy contentment that went with it, the leaking of all tension out of his body. He was boneless and dreamy, two things he hadn't been in a very long time.

Charles murmured something into his neck, then appeared to wake up in degrees, first squirming away from Erik, then shuffling nearer when he'd woken up properly.

"Hello," said Erik, because it cost nothing to be polite as his mother had always told him. He turned onto his back, dislodging Charles from his neck, but the man's arm stayed wrapped around his waist.

Charles said "Mmph," groggily and less than politely.

His arm seemed to burn like a brand onto Erik's flesh. Erik swallowed around the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. "Charles," he ventured, "About what I said last night." He paused irresolutely. He was never one for beating about the bush but he was never one for talking about his feelings either.

Charles withdrew his arm from Erik's waist but only to stretch lazily, from head to toe. "It's fine," he yawned, sounding like he couldn't care less. "Everyone knows you're a grumposaur anyway."

Erik blinked. "A – what?"

Charles grinned. His hair was all ruffled and his eyes that morning blue which, Erik decided, should be made illegal. "Sorry, that's Moira's word," he said.

Erik rolled his eyes. "Of course it is."

Charles smiled again, but more softly. "Do you want to go fly Sean?" he asked.

* * *

Erik had no idea what had happened in Charles's head, but he seemed keen to forget the previous night altogether. Instead of being angry with Erik, or disappointed, which Erik had now realised would be worse, he was extraordinarily chipper. Even when Erik gave in to his overwhelming urge to push Sean off the satellite dish, Charles couldn't be completely angry with him. He simply smiled, barely reproachful, in answer to Erik's grin and they watched Sean fly in victory together.

Hank approached them as they were walking back to the house, Sean having been finally cajoled back onto the ground and chatting excitedly about what he was going to try on his next attempt. Hank was carrying two odd looking devices made of metal, which he waved at Charles. "I've finished them, Professor," he shouted.

Erik cast a curious look at Charles. Charles beamed. "Brilliant." He glanced at Erik. "I'll leave you to it then, Erik."

"Leave meto _what?_" asked Erik, but Charles was already leading the others away with a secretive smile, leaving Erik and Hank alone.

The two of them stared at each other in mutual dislike. Hank was - refreshingly, considering the attitudes of the rest of the team - scared of Erik, and also clearly jealous of how much Raven looked up to him. Erik, unable to resist a bit of casual bullying, had spent most of their interactions sniping sarcastically at him and getting disapproving looks from Charles in response. From the look on Hank's face, they were now into open hostilities.

"The Professor had an idea," Hank muttered. "Said you might be interested."

He flung the strange metal objects at Erik. Erik glared at them, grudgingly tugging them into his hands. "What are they?"

Hank hesitated, then pushed his glasses up on his nose with an air of a man who knew how clever he was and was going to show you whether you liked it or not. "You strap them to your shoes and legs. Then you - well, you either pull on them with your powers, or - or you push the soles of your feet, we're not entirely sure what'll work better. Anyway, theoretically, that means you should be able to - "

"Fly," Erik finished, dumbstruck.

Hank shuffled awkwardly. "That's the theory," he said.

Erik stared at Hank for a long moment. Hank waited in a state of obvious fear.

"Let's get them on," said Erik.

They spent a few minutes going over the different bits of metal and strapping them onto Erik. By the end of it, Erik's legs felt like he'd stepped into two bear traps and he was getting faint remembrances of Shaw strapping his legs down onto examination tables, but he was determined to give the thing a try.

They stood on the gravel together. "Okay," Hank said. "Try pulling at the metal."

Erik focused all his rage and pulled. He felt his feet jerk momentarily off the ground, like he was hopping up in the air, before he landed again.

"Right," Hank said, sounding unsurprised at this. "Now try pushing up at the soles of your feet."

Erik focused as hard as he could. It was difficult to twist his mind around pushing _himself_ rather than an object, but the metal on his legs was eager to obey. He felt one foot rise into the air, and then another, and when he looked down he was about six inches off the ground.

He was flying.

"_Mein Gott_," he said in German, and lost his attention completely, thumping down to the ground again.

Hank beamed as if he were the one who had just achieved flight. "Try again," he said.

Erik focused, this time with more confidence and strength, and began rising off the ground almost immediately. He got to about the height of Hank's knees before the top of him started to wobble. "I'm a bit unbalanced," he said, and lowered himself down again.

Hank nodded, once again as if he'd expected this. "You need something for your top half. Like a helmet or something." He paused. "I could - I could make you one after the. After the…you know. If I survive."

The last bit was said with a touch of bitterness, and Erik sneaked a quick glance at him with renewed discomfort, remembering what he had said the previous night. He felt like he and Charles had given confidence to these kids just for him to take it away again. Once again, this was not going to help the ease at which he got to Shaw. These kids had to be _warriors_. "You'll do great," he managed.

Hank blinked at him. It was the first time Erik had ever said anything nice to him. Erik, awkward and even more annoyed, tried his flying again. This time he got to the height of Hank's waist before his wobbling got too much. He lowered himself a little, grinning. "This is fantastic. I'm flying!"

Hank smiled his slightly-less-than-nervous smile. "The Professor thinks that when you have more control over different sizes and complexity of metal, you'll be able to fly as easily as Sean. And with regular boots and buckles, not such an abundance of metal as you have here."

Erik thought of the satellite dish sourly and crashed back onto the ground, his knees protesting. "No doubt," he replied simply.

Hank showed him how to remove and put the boots back on a few more times, and as he was doing so, Erik remembered how he had mentioned to Charles that he would like to fly, so early on in the week over the first of many bottles of whiskey. And now Charles had tried his hardest to make this wish come true.

He couldn't understand why Charles was wasting so much of his time on him.

He and Hank practised his flying over and over again, until he was able to float the level of Hank's shoulders without wobbling and then, as night was falling and with aching legs, they went in for dinner.

Charles grinned at Erik when he came in to the dining room, metal in hand. "What do you think?" he asked.

Erik had no words – all he could do was smile but that was, apparently, enough. Charles's face lit up like the sun.

That night's dinner was the most excitable meal they'd had the entire week. It was the day of breakthroughs - all of them had advanced in some area of their training. Raven was constantly talking about the amount of weights she'd lifted, Hank was chattering about the miles he'd run, Alex was telling his story about his day of successful hits on dummies, and Sean and Erik were constantly talking over each other about how it felt to fly. Moira asked hundreds of questions, a fork of food held to her mouth and forgotten about, and Charles sat amidst it all and smiled so broadly Erik thought it was a miracle his head didn't fall off. They sat talking way past dessert, and it was only when Moira mentioned that they should get some sleep if they wanted to do as well the next day that they left, still chattering, for their rooms.

* * *

Charles and Erik retreated to Charles's chessboard, with a shared relief that it wasn't Monopoly, and played their way through a few games as was now fast becoming the tradition. They mostly played in silence until Charles, as Erik thought about moving his knight, murmured, "That's not a good move."

Erik glanced up at him sharply. "I did say stay out of my head - "

"No, no, I know - " Charles sat up in his chair, eyes suddenly wide and hands flapping. "You - you were projecting, that's all - I'm trying - I am _trying_, Erik."

Erik paused then sat back, game momentarily forgotten. It seemed that Charles had been aware of Erik's problems with his telepathy after all. He'd probably read it in Erik's head, Erik thought ironically. Aloud he said, "It must be difficult. Being a telepath, and one as strong as you…it must be difficult."

Charles slumped in his chair. "It is," he said morosely.

Erik steepled his fingers in front of him, now no longer interested in the game at all. "So where does it begin and end with you, Charles? How much free will do you allow someone to have and when do you curtail that free will?"

Charles blinked. "I try to never curtail it."

Erik arched an eyebrow. "Really?" He didn't believe that for a moment. "So when I woke from that nightmare the other night and you used your mind to calm me, even when I specifically said _no_ - "

Charles looked like he was about to leap out of his chair altogether. "Erik, I didn't mean to…" he spluttered. "I just wanted to…I wanted to look after you."

The last words came out in a rush, taking Erik aback. They stared at one another. Erik was abruptly aware that they were skating close to something that they'd been avoiding for almost the whole week. _Friends,_ he reminded himself, _we're friends._

"All right," he said, changing the subject as swiftly as possible. "So imagine I was standing before you, and I was about to kill hundreds of people - would you stop me? With your mind?"

Charles looked at Erik as if he'd just suggested he'd make some cutlery dance for the President. "But you wouldn't do that," he said.

Erik felt a stab of irritation that, even now, even after he had seen all the nightmares and heard all the things Erik had said, Charles refused to believe that he was a bad person. What did he have to do to make Charles see it?

"You know I would," he said bluntly. "If I had good reason to. Would you stop me?"

Charles sighed, leaning back and looking away from him. "Erik…"

"Answer the question, Charles."

Charles set his jaw and looked back at him, and Erik saw one of those rare glints of steel in his eyes. It only came about when Erik was really pushing him, or when one of the kids was being deliberately difficult, but it reassured Erik to know it was there. It was good to know Charles wasn't the complete pushover he pretended to be.

"I don't know," Charles snapped. "All right? I don't know."

Erik sat back. "I do," he said.

Charles's jaw moved but he said nothing. Erik sighed. "You can't stay blameless forever, Charles. If you want to play the game properly, you have to do terrible things."

A troubled look passed over Charles's face, though he stayed silent, and Erik suddenly wished he'd said nothing at all. He turned his attention back to the game and soon enough they were playing as amicably as ever, if more quietly than before.

* * *

That night his mother was back, telling him "everything is good", the bullet lodged in her head and blood trickling down in an ever-steady stream as she stared at him with sad eyes. He was trying to get to her, to stop the blood with his hands, but there was someone holding him back and he couldn't get to her, he couldn't even _breathe_, he wanted to get to his mother, he wanted to hold her, he _just wanted -_

"It's me, it's me," Charles said in his ear, and Erik was suddenly awake and aware that he was thrashing around in the bed, Charles's arms around his chest, trying to stop him from doing himself any damage.

"Damn it," Erik panted, and relaxed. Charles let go of him instantly. "_Damn_ it," Erik said again and slumped onto the bed, arm over his face.

"It's okay," Charles said, settling down on his side. He put a comforting hand on Erik's arm. "It's all right."

"You must be sick of this by now," Erik said into his arm.

Charles patted Erik's arm gently. "Not at all," he said.

Erik almost said _you are so good to me._ The words were even there in his throat, waiting to come out, and yet he couldn't say them. Instead he said, "Damn it," again, breathlessly, and kept repeating this until he fell asleep again.

* * *

**Saturday**

Erik awoke, for the second time, to someone else in his bed. Charles was curled up on his side, facing Erik and not snoring for once. He was still making noises, mumbling noises as if he were talking to someone, but at least it was less disruptive.

Erik was reminded, suddenly, that tomorrow would be the day of the President's speech. People had been panicking for the whole week about Cuba, diplomats urgently arguing back and forth. The few times Erik had watched the TV with the others, he'd made so many acerbic comments he'd been banished from the room. He didn't trust diplomats. He was all about getting things done and in his opinion diplomats did the opposite of that.

Which meant, of course, that tomorrow would likely be the last day of their training. The President would make his address and from that they would be able to work out Shaw's next move.

And _that_ meant soon all of this would be over. Erik would have had his revenge at last, that blissful, perfect revenge, and then…what? What would he do next? Go and live an ordinary life? It sounded so unlike him.

Although, he thought, watching Charles mumble into his pillow, it could have its perks.

* * *

He went for a run, leaving Charles to sleep-talk alone, then stood and glared at the satellite dish for a while. It refused to move, and now the fear of that never happening, of him failing in his training and failing in his mission, came back stronger than ever. He could feel his chest tighten at the thought of it.

A grey blur in spectacles shot past him on the gravel, then stopped. "Morning," said Hank.

Maybe at the beginning of the week, Erik would have grunted or simply walked away. Now he found himself saying, "Morning," right back again.

Hank grinned at him. "Do you want to practise some more flying?"

They practiced with the metal shoes all morning until Erik was able to get as high as one of the trees. He was still wobbling like crazy, but Hank was full of promises of helmets and maybe metal shoulder-pads to correct this, and seemed thrilled by the prospect of inventing them. Once you got over the faintly insulting way the kid craved normality and his resentment at Erik's general…_Erikness_...he was a good person. Sweet, helpful and diplomatic, which made him perfect under Charles's command and useless under Erik's. Still, Erik couldn't help but like him. His earnest intelligence was very similar to Charles's.

By lunchtime, Charles and Alex had come out of his basement to practice Alex's shooting out in the open and Sean got back into his wings and did some more flying around. Hank and Raven had a race which Hank won despite Raven's attempts to trip him, distract him or otherwise cheat. Charles, who was focusing on Alex and occasionally shouting instructions at Sean, looked bright and happy, swapping in-jokes with Raven and smiling at Erik. It was the first time they'd practised their powers as a group and they were full of ideas, bouncing them off each other and peppering them with jokes.

It was, Erik realised, all very _domestic._

In horror at himself, he split away from the group and half flew, half hovered his way to the stone balcony to try his luck one more time with the satellite dish.

It wouldn't move. It never did - no matter how much rage Erik pushed into his powers, he couldn't move it. He envisioned his mother dying, envisioned the torture he'd been through, the things he'd seen in the camp, and yet his power wasn't reacting. Sweat was dripping off his face by the time he gave up, so he relaxed and mopped miserably at his brow. All these thoughts about how great he was, and he couldn't even move a damn satellite dish. He had all this power and no access to it. Everyone else had improved so much in a mere week, and he was just as he was before.

Sometimes it felt like Erik was struggling against _himself_.

"For God's sake, Erik," Charles said behind him. "If you don't want me to read your mind, you need to stop screaming your thoughts."

Erik turned on him, grateful for someone to snap at. "I can't move the dish," he said. "Okay? I can't work out how."

Charles arched an eyebrow. "Even now?"

"What do you mean _even now_, I've never been able to do it and I never will, Charles, this is a waste of time."

"Not a waste of time," Charles replied. He looked thoughtful. "I was hoping you might work it out yourself, but…"

"But what?" Erik demanded.

Charles opened his mouth to respond, but then they heard a frightened yell, saw a flash of red light and then one of the trees near where they'd been practising caught fire. "Crap," said Charles, already retreating to where the kids were. "Erik, I'll promise I'll go through it with you tomorrow – _Alex, did you take your breast plate thing off – I told you not to do that!_"

He ran back to the kids and the tree on fire, the sounds of squabbling and blame-storming already reaching Erik's ears. Erik sighed, ignored the satellite dish and did a few laps around the gardens in his metal boots. At least he could do that, he thought.

At least he could fly.

* * *

"We're fantastic," Erik said at dinner that evening.

A rather shocked pause greeted this. It was likely, Erik thought, that by now everyone was starting to feel emotionally whiplashed by him. Just a few evenings ago he had been positing the theory that most of them were going to die and now he was telling them how wonderful they were. He saw more than a few disbelieving glances swapped around the table.

"I'm serious," he insisted. "We're amazing – all of us." He gestured to Sean. "Look at you, Sean, you can _fly_. And Alex, you can devastate any target. Hank can run faster than any human alive, Raven can _look_ like any human alive, and Charles, you are – "

And then he glanced at Charles and promptly ran out of words. Charles was smiling that kind of gentle, sweet smile he sometimes wore when watching Raven talking, or Moira laughing, or any of the kids discussing the merits of their powers. Once Erik had glanced up from a particularly difficult chess move to find Charles bestowing that smile on him. It always seemed a shade sadder whenever it was turned on Erik.

There was a small pause while Erik tried valiantly to remember what he'd been talking about. "What I'm trying to say," he said, struggling on, "Is that all of us are brilliant. We could beat any human we wanted in any way we wanted." He felt Charles hesitate beside him, but carried on. "It's like Charles said, we're the next stage of evolution. We're _superior_ to them."

"Uh," Charles stumbled, losing his smile, "I didn't quite mean we were _superior_ – I mean – we shouldn't – "

"We're better," Erik decided. "As a team, we're an unstoppable force. The humans should be afraid of us."

There was an uncertain pause. "You said the other night we were likely to die," Hank said, finally. Since their work on Erik's flying, he'd been more vocal in his opinions than ever before, as if being close to Erik and yet staying alive was somehow a confidence booster.

"Well," Erik said, "I was wrong." And he smiled.

This didn't seem to make things any better, though Erik was sure they should. Didn't this cancel out the seeds of doubt he'd planted before? Was he smiling wrong? Raven was beaming at him as if everything he'd said made perfect sense to her, but he couldn't work out if this was because she thought the same or because, as he was starting to suspect, she had a crush on him. The others were looking different shades of nervous and worried.

Charles sighed and said, "Erik…" and then in Erik's head added _why are you saying this?_

_I need them to be confident,_ Erik replied.

_So that they can beat Shaw for you,_ Charles retorted, and Erik had no answer to that.

Instead, he picked at his dinner. The conversation had moved on in the group, and now Hank was explaining in very complicated scientific language how Sean's wings worked against air currents whilst Sean was interrupting with things like "it's freakin' _awesome_ man!"

_The more confidence they have, the less likely they are to die, Charles,_ Erik said at last. _I thought you'd be pleased._

He caught a wave of concern and more than a little mistrust at Erik's motives, but Charles said nothing. Erik sighed. _Just get out of my head, Charles._

Charles silently obeyed, and they returned to the conversation.

Erik remembered, later, watching them during that dinner, as they ate, talked and joked around, and thinking _they could all die doing this_. He, more than anyone, knew what it was like to go into battle, knew how easily lives could be lost, and yet he was letting these people he had helped train for a week, these children, _fellow mutants_, go into it anyway. Erik was sacrificing them like lambs, simply because he needed them to defeat Shaw.

If he were Charles, he would warn them, but Charles was too naïve to think like Erik. He honestly believed that the bunch of them would be enough to stop Shaw and only come out of the struggle with mere cuts and bruises. It was wrong. Erik should speak up. These were _his_ people, these were mutants. He should be protecting them.

He said nothing. Maybe, he thought, there was such a thing as collateral damage.

He would miss them.

He would miss all of them.

* * *

That evening, instead of allowing Charles and Erik to scurry off to their chessboard, Hank corralled them all into the living room with the excuse that, "I've got a Polaroid camera I've been tinkering with." Considering Hank was always tinkering with something, sometimes several things at once, this came as a surprise to no one. "It should take colour photographs now, but I need some willing participants."

"I'm not willing," Erik said, but everyone, as usual, ignored him. A combination of Charles, Moira and Raven hauled him into the mix and suddenly Hank was taking photos of everything – Raven and Charles sharing a joke, their arms around each other, Moira smiling up from some paperwork, Sean and Alex shoving each other around and laughing. They even had a group photo where Erik lurked on the sidelines until Charles noticed and dragged him in.

For most of the evening, everything they did seemed to be accompanied by the flash of a camera and Hank making noises of interest and excitement. It was too distracting to play chess, so Erik whiled away his time in captivity by flicking through the channels on the TV with a twitch of his finger, ignoring requests and focusing mainly on the news. The others spent the evening chatting, sharing favourite books and berating his TV choices.

At one point Hank said, "I wish Darwin was here, I'd have loved to catch some of his adaptations on camera," and the noise seemed to lull, everyone around Erik suddenly quiet. Erik was surprised more than anything – Darwin hadn't really been mentioned since they'd arrived at the house and Erik had actually managed to forget all about him. He'd thought the kids, what with the amount of training they'd had to do, had forgotten him too, but maybe they hadn't. Maybe they never had. Maybe not talking about something was in itself a way of remembering it.

Raven put a comforting arm around Hank. "We all wish he was here," she said gently, and Sean and Alex nodded in answer, Charles placing a hand on Hank's shoulder. Erik had no idea what to say, so he said nothing.

He didn't know how to comfort someone about a death. No one had ever comforted him.

* * *

When he went back into his room that night, Charles was already stretched out on his side of the bed, yawning, dressed in his grey shirt and slacks.  
"I thought this might save us more time later," he said, and grinned.

Erik couldn't smile back. He perched on his side of the bed, suddenly nervous in a way he couldn't explain. "I'll still have nightmares."

"That's all right."

"I'll wake you up."

"I mind not."

"Screaming."

"It's _fine_, Erik," Charles said, his voice already muffled with drowsiness, "As long as you get in the damn bed."

Erik got in the damn bed and switched off the bedside light. Darkness and awkwardness fell upon him equally. It was one thing to wake up in the middle of the night after a nightmare and then share a bed, it seemed entirely another to share a bed _before_ the nightmare. His skin itched.

"This is odd," he said aloud.

He was answered with Charles's snores.

* * *

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed, I had so much fun writing this. Thank you for all your lovely comments and love! x  
**


	4. Sunday & Monday

**Sunday**

The first thing Erik thought when he woke up was _I didn't have a nightmare_. This was such a shock that he sat up immediately, wondering if it was still the middle of the night, but the sun was shining through the curtains and he could hear birdsong outside.

He'd slept through the night.

He turned around to the sleeping Charles, who was drooling into the sheets. "Charles," he snapped. This was no time to appreciate Charles sleeping, this was _urgent._

Charles murmured something but didn't wake. "_Charles,_" Erik said louder and then Charles said, "Wffgszzle? Huh?" and cracked open an eyelid. He blinked for a bit and then slurred, "Erik, what - ?"

"What did you do to my mind?" Erik snapped.

"Huh?" mumbled Charles again, but more coherently this time. "Nothing. What are you talking about?"

"I didn't have a nightmare," Erik said. "You must have done something to my mind."

Charles rubbed his eyes. "Erik, I fell asleep before you and I didn't wake up until now, I didn't do anything to your mind."

Erik paused. "But," he said. "I mean, I've never…" _never had a night without a nightmare_, he thought to himself. Not since his mother had died. He felt completely thrown.

"Great, no nightmares." Charles snuggled back into the pillows. "Does that mean we can go back to sleep now?"

"But – " Erik started, which was when Charles grabbed him by the arm and forced him back down onto the bed.

"Sleep," he said sternly and flung an arm over Erik's chest to prevent him sitting up again. Erik lay stiffly on the bed as Charles wriggled closer, softened his grip and then proceeded to fall back asleep as easily as breathing.

Erik lay on the bed for a while, feeling completely disorientated. There was no way he was going to go back to sleep, he decided. It was too bright outside and he was too confused, and Charles's arm over his chest was not helping matters at all, it was not comfortable _at all_. There was _no way_, he decided firmly, that he was going back to sleep.

Which was when he went and did exactly that.

* * *

He woke to a light fluttery feeling on his face, soft as butterfly wings, and when he opened his eyes he saw that Charles was leaning over him, running the tips of his fingers down the side of Erik's jaw. "You slept almost the whole morning," he said, smiling.

"Mm," said Erik. He was feeling warm, lazy and more rested than he had been in a long time, and he never wanted to get out of this bed. Charles's eyes were a dreamy blue that morning, bright as the sky, and before he could stop himself, Erik was reaching up to brush his knuckles against the man's cheek in a hesitant imitation of Charles's touch on him. If Charles had blinked or flinched even for a second, Erik would have been out of the room like a shot, but he just pressed his cheek into the back of Erik's hand and smiled like they did this all the time.

There was a long silence while they lay staring at each other, and then Charles said suddenly, "Do you believe yourself incapable of love?"

Erik stiffened, suddenly guarded, and dropped his hand back onto his chest. "Love is a foolish, childish emotion that gets everyone killed," he said stiltedly.

Charles paused, though he didn't look surprised at all. His fingers remained on Erik's cheek but they stopped moving. "So you don't love."

"I _can't_ love," Erik corrected suspiciously. He could feel his sleepy laziness abandoning him for his old paranoid wariness, and brushed Charles's hand away from his cheek.

Charles smiled as if Erik had said something incredibly romantic rather than the complete opposite. "Then what do you feel about me?"

If Erik got any stiffer, he would turn into a sheet of metal himself. He propped himself up on his elbows, no longer relaxed. "Are you reading my mind again?" he demanded.

Charles's smile widened. "Oh Erik," he said, all soft danger. "I don't have to."

Erik hesitated, irresolute. Charles settled down beside him, resting his chin on his knotted hands. "So. How do you fancy moving a satellite dish?"

Erik stared at him.

* * *

They stood by that stone balcony and Erik failed to move the satellite just one more time. And then Charles brought forward the thought of his mother, that thought of the two of them lighting the Hanukkah candles and suddenly it was like he'd opened a door in the dark of Erik's head and let a crack of light through. All at once there was not only rage in his mind but serenity, a mixture of love and hate all broiling inside him, swirling inside him, crashing inside him like waves on a shore, and when he raised his hand the satellite dish moved as easily as if it were a bullet, or a coin.

And all the time Charles stood behind him, watching him, saying _there's good in you, I sensed it._ It was the first time in Erik's life that he'd ever even considered the idea that he could be anything other than a monster and of course, of _course_, it was going to be Charles who made him think it.

And then, in a rush, it was time for the President's speech and they realised Shaw's next move, and Erik had to leave the room to process it all properly.

* * *

He paced the gardens and thought harder than he ever had in his life. He had never cared about Shaw's attempt to start nuclear war. Maybe he would kill the humans with his nuclear attack, maybe he wouldn't, but none of that mattered to Erik. He had no doubts that the mutants would survive it, and mutants were all he cared about. There were other problems to tackle.

He had found the secret to his power, the one that Shaw had tried so hard to exploit. But in using it, he – and all the other mutants - would be discovered for what they were.

He would be able to kill Shaw. But the humans would kill _him _straight afterwards.

He'd spent time talking and training with other mutants – being in a team and, to his astonishment, enjoying it. But that team would be dead tomorrow.

He'd woken up in bed with Charles and a blissful lack of nightmares. But he would never be able to do that again.

He would get his vengeance tomorrow. But he would lose everything else.

It was as though, after a week of the strangest ups and downs he'd ever had, life felt fit to throw him the biggest up and then the biggest down in quick succession. There was a…a _Charles _in his head now, whereas before there had only been a Shaw. What was it Charles had always said to Hank? "In each of us, two natures are at war". Maybe that was true of Erik as well – he had a Charles side and a Shaw side. And what the hell was he going to do about it now?

He did consider, and he remembers considering even now, not killing Shaw. Just walking back to the house and telling them all not to go ahead with the mission, persuading those children - and they _were_ still children, he could not deny it - that going to Cuba would kill them. They could spend their days living in private, finding other mutants in private and enjoying their abilities in private. He and Charles, together.

But Shaw would be alive and, not only that, but _successful _in his life. The man who killed his mother would still be so _very alive_.

It was no longer possible to kill Shaw and then walk away from his past one and for all. Erik would be sacrificing everything tomorrow if he killed Shaw. The privacy of his powers, the team, a home, his life…Charles.

Charles wanted him to be the better man, but Erik had moved a satellite dish that morning. He was already better.

* * *

They had the quietest dinner they'd had so far that evening. Even Moira, usually happy to break awkward silences and steer conversations away from arguments, was disheartened. Erik sat, listening to the scrape of cutlery on plates and watched all of them.

Hank, with his readiness to help someone even if he originally hated their guts. Sean, with his new love of flying that Erik shared. Alex, with his inability to hurt someone he loved and addiction to cigarettes. Raven, with her developing desire to just _be herself_. Charles.

Charles.

His mother.

Erik made up his mind.

* * *

That shred of guilt eventually made him warn Charles, just a little, over their chess match that evening, of the dangers the kids were facing. Perhaps, he thought, if he didn't have the humanity to stop them getting killed, Charles would. He said, "Shaw. Us. They won't differentiate. They'll fear us. And that fear will turn to hatred."

But instead Charles, in all his ridiculous naivety, would not even consider the idea that the humans would turn on them.

"Not if we stop a war," he said, and that was all there was to it. That was the difference between them right there - Erik always saw the worst and Charles always saw the best, and maybe they were both wrong, but in this scenario, in this place…Erik knew he would be right.

But he'd tried warning Charles, he thought as he made his way back to his room shortly afterwards, ignoring the way his stomach was churning. At least he'd _tried_.

He opened the door on a naked Raven.

* * *

Raven said, when they parted from the kiss, "Damn."

"Er," said Erik. He wasn't used to people saying that after he'd kissed them.

Raven sighed, lowering blue eyelids over amber eyes. "You're in love with him, aren't you."

Erik froze.

"It's all right, it's not totally obvious or anything," Raven quickly added. "I just know the signs." She smiled wryly at him. "I fancied myself in love with Charles for a bit. He just has that sort of…charm about him, doesn't he? A magnetism."

Erik blinked. He couldn't exactly deny it but he wasn't sure he could admit it either. Out of all their problems, he'd never thought he'd have to face _this_.

Raven sighed again and got out of the bed, naked and blue and lovely in her beauty. Erik would never regret kissing her – she was a marvel.

"'Course I got over it," she continued. "He's like my brother. I'm not sure you will though. Or him."

Erik's tongue unstuck itself. "Sorry - _or him?_"

Raven threw him a half grin. "He's not the only one with magnetism, Erik."

She strolled over to the door, full of a confidence she hadn't had when he'd walked in. He highly suspected he'd done her some good. "How about we carry this on in a few years?" she said casually. "If you're free of course. Night, sweetie."

She blew him a kiss and left, and Erik stared at the door in complete and utter bemusement.

* * *

Eventually he ventured out of the room to find Charles. He knew, somehow, that the man wouldn't be in bed. Tonight didn't really seem like a night for sleeping, despite his earlier words, and there was no way he was going to leave their conversation where they'd left it earlier.

He found Charles, drunk as a skunk on champagne and lounging on a sofa in the living room. He was swigging right out of the bottle, grinning in his idiotically dreamy fashion.

"Mein Gott," Erik said, leaning on the doorframe to admire the view. "You really are a complete lush, aren't you?"

Charles beamed at him. "I'm drunk!" he announced.

At the beginning of the week, Erik wouldn't have been able to smile at that. Now, he felt a corner of his mouth lift before he could stop himself. "You'll regret it tomorrow," he pointed out, and walked over to the sofa, kneeling down to wrestle the bottle out of Charles's hand.

Charles let the bottle go with grudging consent. "I'll regret a lot of things tomorrow, I'm sure," he said morosely.

Erik placed the bottle out of grabbing range and turned back to Charles, about to order him to go and get some sleep, but before the words could escape his lips, Charles leaned forward on the sofa, took Erik's face in gentle hands and kissed him on his open mouth.

It was the easiest kiss Erik had ever experienced - he moved as if he had been waiting the entire week for Charles's lips to touch his. He knew just how to kiss back, just how far to tilt his head, just how slowly he should run his hand through Charles's hair. Charles sighed and leaned into him, wrapping one hand around the back of Erik's neck, and everything he did was perfectly familiar. It felt like they'd been kissing for fifty years, not fifty seconds.

When they parted, Erik heard himself murmur, "What is it with everyone throwing themselves at me tonight?"

It was not what he'd planned to say, but in hindsight (which Erik has a lot of now) it was probably better than the alternative, which would have been something both romantic and stupid in equal measure. Charles's slightly unfocused eyes, so very blue this close up, squinted as he frowned. "Who else has been kissing you?"

Erik felt himself do that half smile again. "You'd kill me if I told you," he said. He ran his hand through Charles's hair again – it was soft, and thick, and grabable. "Come to bed."

A slow, luxurious smile spread itself across Charles's face. "Is that an invitation?"

The thought of it, of _going to bed_, made Erik breathless, but even now something was stopping him, constricting his chest in warning. "Maybe tomorrow?" he offered. "After the mission." Because for Erik it was all about the mission now, even with Charles so close and intimate, even with Charles's taste on his lips, it was all about killing Shaw.

Charles met his eyes, but Erik couldn't tell if he was reading his mind or not. He hoped not. His mind was not a pretty place at that moment. "Tomorrow," Charles said at last. He nodded slowly. "Okay. Tomorrow."

Erik nodded in reply and helped Charles struggle up off the sofa. He swayed a bit in the process, but Erik had no problem with gripping hold of his waist to keep him upright, especially when Charles giggled in a flustered way that couldn't quite be blamed on the alcohol.

Once he was upright, Charles smiled brightly but didn't make any move to leave the room. "You know," he said, "You could be happy, Erik."

Erik glanced at him but didn't know what to say.

"You've had such little happiness in your life," Charles continued. He was standing flush against Erik, seemingly unaware that he was doing so. "But you could be happy here."

Erik felt himself stiffen, tried to resist the urge to shove Charles away. "I told you earlier. That's not an option."

He expected Charles to move away at that, but he did not. Instead he said, "Before, when I touched your mind, when I found you and your mother - "

"_Don't_," Erik said warningly.

"That wasn't the only bright memory I found there, Erik," Charles persisted with drunken recklessness. "There are many, many more." He paused. "Would you like me to show you?"

Erik wanted to say no, but, just as he hadn't been able to earlier, he couldn't do it here. He was curious, still curious, as to why Charles believed he was good even after all the evidence he had seen to the contrary. He nodded instead.

"Okay," Charles said, and pressed a warm hand to Erik's face.

And he saw them.

He saw Moira proclaiming Erik was adorable, even as he threatened her. He saw Alex begging for a cigarette and Erik misunderstanding. He saw Sean falling out of the window and Erik laughing himself silly at the sight of it. He saw Raven trouncing Erik at Monopoly, grinning in victory as she did so. He saw Hank's smile as Erik's feet finally rose from the ground. He saw them all eagerly chattering at the dinner table, so excited about what they had learned that day. He saw Charles's lips touch Erik's.

_See,_ Charles's voice said in his head. _See the happiness you could have._

_Charles, _Erik thought desperately. _Please don't._

Charles's hand gently slid down and off Erik's face. The images flickered away. "All right," he said quietly. "All right."

Erik marshalled his thoughts together. "Bed," he ordered.

* * *

They got ready for bed in silence, then lay in said bed in the same silence. Erik wanted to lean over Charles and kiss him until they both lost their senses, but that same constriction was sitting there inside his chest, heavy and halting.

After tomorrow, he thought, they would have time. Surely they would have time.

Charles's hand sought his. "Erik," he said, "If you kill Shaw, you will go somewhere that I cannot. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Erik answered, because he did.

"We're on the same path at the moment," Charles's voice said, weary and soft in the darkness. "But that path could so easily split, Erik."

"I know," said Erik, because he did.

And yet he also knew that fact changed nothing. Shaw would die tomorrow, and at his hands. Killed by a better man. Probably the best way to go, at least for him.

Charles sighed and let go of Erik's hand and Erik got the feeling, all over again, that he had somehow disappointed him.

* * *

**Monday**

Erik woke that morning nightmare-less and hating this fact. He had wanted the nightmares, had wanted his sleep riddled with them so that he could wake up enraged and ready to murder Shaw in the worst way possible. Instead he woke up fully rested and staring down at Charles's sleeping face.

It was like not even his own body wanted him to kill Shaw.

Charles woke up barely minutes later, smiling and determined to make the mission successful. Erik followed his cheery lead, more than a little confused and determined not to mention the previous night one bit.

* * *

They flew towards Cuba, facing each other in the plane across a sudden unbridgeable distance. For most of the time, Charles smiled and chatted with Raven and the others, keeping them at ease, and Erik, antsy and ready to face twenty Shaws, sat and fidgeted. He wanted to be in Cuba already, getting to Shaw and killing him - killing him like he'd always wanted, all rage and fury and _justice_ -

_No,_ Charles whispered in his head. _You won't._

Erik glanced at Charles but he was, in person at least, telling an in depth joke about Raven to Sean, expression bright and cheerful.

_Get out of my head,_ Erik snapped. _This is the last time I will say it, Charles._

There was a pause, so long that Erik half wondered if Charles had done as ordered. Then Charles said, in a very sure voice, _I know you will be the better man, Erik._

There was no point saying anything more. Charles would always think Erik was a good man and there would be nothing Erik could do to change it. Nothing at all.

Except, perhaps, kill Shaw.

He watched Charles finish the joke, watched Sean burst out laughing at it and Raven gently punch Charles on the arm, and then he watched Charles smile, a great, beaming, innocent smile, and his heart died inside him.

* * *

In the end, Erik does not regret what he did. None of the team were killed in spite of his worries, and in actuality the humans knowing about mutants have made things easier for him. He can be himself, like he always wanted. Raven enjoys it, has blossomed in her powers now she has the ability to be herself, and Erik knows he has grown far stronger in his power as well. He can fly great distances now, not just hover at treetop level. He can move whole cities, not just a submarine. He does not regret killing Shaw. He does not regret anything of Cuba at all.

But he does regret the week that preceded it. It troubles him like nothing else ever has.

One day, one of the Brotherhood's teleporters turns up in their headquarters with a brown envelope marked with the name of Erik. Not Magneto. _Erik._

Erik stares at the envelope for ages before opening it.

Inside are a collection of photographs. They are the photos Hank took one night in that week. There is a photo of Charles and Raven laughing and smiling together, Raven blonde and Charles uncrippled. There is a photo of Moira smiling up from her paperwork. There is a photo of Sean and Alex joking together. There is a photo of all of them huddled around the sofa, all of them grinning at the camera but Erik. Charles has a hand on his arm and Erik recalls, vividly, the moment when Charles had tugged him into the photo, smiling as he did so and saying something like "Hank said _all_ the team, Erik".

And then there is one last photo. One that Erik does not remember being taken. He and Charles are sitting on one of the sofas together, sitting far closer to each other than he recalls, though perhaps his memory is faulty. Erik has clearly said something both amusing and rude because Charles is laughing, head thrown backwards, with a slightly guilty expression on his face, and Erik is smiling like a mischievous schoolboy. His eyes are on Charles's face, obviously intent on engraving every one of the man's expressions into his mind as though he thinks he has a limited time to appreciate them. Which, in the end, he did.

There is no note that comes with the photographs, but there does not need to be. It does the job it was sent to do.

Because for a moment, Erik remembers that week, every detail of it, and for an even briefer moment…he does not regret it.

* * *

**A/N: Thanks for your patience in this last chapter guys, and I hope you enjoyed it (and the story as a whole!) Thanks for all your reviews and love, it is so very appreciated! x**


End file.
